Resilience

Been thinking a lot about this quality lately and what it really means. It's everywhere I look, hiding around every corner, breaking into my thoughts at unexpected times, even woven into the fabric of my manuscript.

Maybe, just maybe, that's what this year has been all about. As anyone that knows me knows, this year has been a train wreck for me, especially on paper. I never managed to find a job, I have less money than perhaps ever and more bills! I am 28, single, unmarried, and about as likely to do anything adult (buy a home, have good credit, date, marry, have sex, kids, etc) as your average 6th grader. Chances of that changing anytime soon? Slim to none. I've managed to finish out the year having re-gained the weight I lost, quit the job I got hired for after a month, attended 3 funerals in another month, traveled to Atlanta 4 times for my grammy, and unwillingly cut off all my hair.

But that's not how I actually feel. And that's the amazing part. Astoundingly there is happiness and joy in my life. Most importantly there is peace. God told me that I would lay aside every weight in 2008 sometime in December of 2007:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us...
Hebrews 12:1

I thought it was a joke, a word game, and I prayed that if it wasn't He was talking about weight loss. (Yeah, no.) I was short-sighted and simplistic. (Big surprise.) In lieu of pounds, I've lain aside huge portions of:
1) pride
2) false sense of control
3) dependence on anything but God to provide for me
4) apathy about the political process and my ability to affect change in the world
5) blocks and obstacles to my creativity and motivation for writing
6) materialism, consumer culture, and the technical imperative

Those are some pretty big weights! I still have more things to set down before I can run completely unfettered, but I am happy with this, because with each stone I set down, I get lighter and lighter, and can run faster and faster, fly higher and higher. This direction takes me so much closer to God.

The end of the year finds me still @ a crossroads in life-- that's the running with patience part-- and I am possessed of resilience, joy, peace, and a more unshakeable faith than 12 months ago. It occurs to me that these priceless lessons are taught by the experience of living. There is no class, no preparation for these tests. The test just goes on and on until you pass it. That's about as exciting as a lifelong pop bar exam, but it worketh resilience in me. Maybe this really has been the best year ever. And to God I say: "thank you.

The Wind Says Soon

Hurricane Fay is just kissing Long Beach, Mississippi today, and I am here. The breeze is blowing every which way, and the rain is so light that the drops swirl into mists like Starry Night. There is no sun, but no angry clouds either. The temperature is just right for a windbreaker, although if I had my druthers I would select a violently patterned, swirling caftan. It's a day for drama; the gulfcoast equivalent of a Cornish moor. It makes me contemplative, and a little sad.

I have opened the all the doors and the windows and the blinds, and I am inviting the weather right in for a chat. It's been whispering secrets all day and night, and I can't help but think that if I were a better listener, a dearer friend, I might learn a powerful secret. It will be a night for spells, I can already tell.

Without a car I must scheme and deal for a ride to the beach. I long to be there today, walking in the sand, my caftan blowing about, the scritchy grains dusting my toes and between. I'll stop to pick up rocks, shells, and other detritus, all while getting the pedicure I can't afford. It's there, at that time, I'll sit and stare and The Story might begin, might take me over. It's become not only a dream of mine to write, but also my salvation, the swift boat rescue after years adrift at sea. When will it come? I must admit, probably not during my fanciful imaginings.

The wind frees the strands of my hair from its queue one at a time, and they blow against my face in time with the breeze, and ghostly fingers skim my cheek. Comfort and hope bloom while patience grows. "Soon", Fay says. "Soon."

Post Theme: Clarity (acoustic) by John Mayer

Come the Storm

Hurricane Fay, come blow your horn!
the boards on the window, the cows in the barn
where are brave citizens on coastal streets?
"under their blue tarps starting to weep."
Will you help them? "No not I;
I'll wash all away, with none left dry."


What is the nature of a storm? Is there an evil sentience, or only the focused energy of a thoughtless minion of higher principalities, of deities? Is it sent, or allowed? Believing either is your choice, and the only thing you can control.

Bring it on.

Sisyphus Speaks

It's been awhile, but I've been busy at my task you see. I have become my namesake, Sisyphus, cursed to a backbreaking, soul-stripping, ubiquitous task... survival. I don't even ask why anymore. Or when this will end. It feels like they've got me right where they want me, impervious to well-meaning exhortation, to pie-in-the-sky notions like "someday your prince will come". It's funny, I've never been defeatist, but I don't know what else to call this.

I'm not unaware that my problems and situation are laughable, and that makes me laughable. It's been great for my self-image. I mean, what am I really complaining about? Joblessness? Quarter-life crisis? Even knowing the meaning or spelling of the words marks my place as pampered and middle class. I'd love to pull myself up, but I sold my boots, and so I have no bootstraps.

Nowhere to turn, nowhere to run, no rescue plot afoot. There exists only this continual uphill battle. What kind of mountains are these, with no peaks, no valleys, no sheltering caves, just inclines?

Tonight I feel...

Tonight I feel like the last person standing after a war. The only sane one in the room. And after writing that I can't help but think: how emo! That was the equivalent to a childish whine, "no one understands me!" Crisis averted by my inner wit.

Tonight I feel like there are a lot of stupid people out there, and all of the smart ones are incommunicado, or maybe can only be reached by ham radio, which I don't know how to operate.

Tonight I feel cabin fever crawling up my legs, my back, and through my scalp, like the flesh-eating red ants in the latest Indiana Jones flick.

Tonight I feel frustrated that everyone that I want to talk to, to take comfort in, all the people that I call to get a lift from a funky mood, or a fresh perspective on my dreary circumstances seems to be living a more interesting and fulfilling life and is unable to be reached at this time. I hang up before I can leave a message. I don't want to say something that I will regret, or be unwilling to clarify or discuss tomorrow.

Tonight I feel angry and ashamed of my unwavering penchant for comparing myself to others and envying their accomplishments. However short I may have fallen, or short-sighted I may be to do it, it's like I can't stop. I am certain this isn't why Facebook was created!

Tonight I feel like I am on a giant wheel of fortune, and I keep landing on bankrupt and losing my effing turn. This game is rigged!


Tonight I feel like human nature is a dark thing, and no one does the right thing anymore. An example: I think that HRC is "suspending her campaign" instead of conceding because she plans to wait in the wings in case "something happens" to Barack Obama. It's not too far a stretch for me tonight, especially in light of her bizarre and malevolent statements about Bobby Kennedy's assassination a few short weeks ago. All the evil conspiracies seems totally plausible tonight.

Tonight I wish it were the future. The place where this is a fuzzy memory, chucked into the bucket of melodrama, of bored self-indulgence. The time where my life is so full that there is no room to remember these times as anything other than the desert journey toward an oasis destination. And it would also be cool if Barack Obama were president at that time....

Tonight, I see, will be tomorrow in a matter of minutes. Although not far enough in the future to forget tonight, it is better than nothing.

Post Theme: Sometimes by Bilal

I Feel Trapped

After my telephone interview today, I'm feeling trapped. Now before I get into this, I do realize that I may be overreacting and that next week I may feel foolish about writing this, but I gotta be me.

It's not that I didn't do well. In fact, I think that I did very well, certainly well enough to be called in for a face to face interview. Fact is, after finding out more about the job, my suspicions are confirmed. It's a sales job going back into an industry that I don't care for and that I gratefully escaped when Hurricane Katrina gave me the opportunity. The prospect of being forced to take it by my financial circumstance and sheer pragmatism (I mean it's not like I'm getting offers or even calls from anywhere else) fills me with impotence and frustration. My hands feel tied, and the irony of my situation does not escape me. After determining to revamp my resume, my angle, and my career direction in an effort to avoid being unfulfilled, I stumble onto a job just like the ones I couldn't get last fall when I was actually trying!! What does it all mean? What am I supposed to do?

The feeling of being herded in down a chute, like a doomed heifer at a meat packing plant, is achingly familiar. A feeling of doom is rising within me like the tide, and I didn't realize that I was cycling back around. You see, each time I've started over it's been like this. Forced to take a position that I didn't actively decide to take. It's like this: if I had come to the conclusion that this was my best option, then no regrets, but if I fall into this by default, then all my struggling has been for naught, because it has been a struggle for control, for power, for the chance to choose my adventure like one of those damn comic books in middle school. I didn't realize then that the ability to choose would be stripped from me at a later point in life, or I would have read those books more. Whatever happens now is a choice that I must stay committed to; to change positions in any less than three years would be career suicide, and to leave the industry a second time would consign me to being labeled "unfocused", and you can't trust an unfocused person in management. "Unfocused" people don't get promoted. So whatever my new direction, it is a weighty decision of some permanence.

As I stated before, however, these are reflections of my thoughts at this point in time. In another week, the present snow globe may have been jostled by the Divine Hand, and I will be looking at a completely different landscape. That is to say that I have concluded (wisely, if I do say so myself) to put this away, to wait and see, to stand and believe. Every step I take is ordered, and each action takes me closer. Selah.

Post Theme: Closer by Goapele

A Modern Freedom Struggle

It occurred to me today that it's Black History Month. Duh, right? I should know that, should have realized earlier, should have paid attention to the one month of pseudo-solicitousness that I am entitled to per year. Somehow I missed it.

Last month I attended a certain Sunday morning's services at my parent's uber-traditional Baptist church. I remember being mortified as Sister so and so (complete with hat that could be seen from outer space) asked all the "youth in the church 10 to 15 years old" to stand. She then asked them to come to the front of the church. They slinked forward, barely compliant, disgruntled to be interrupted from their Sunday morning social hour activities of texting, flirting, eating, and other assorted nonsense. The good sister lined them up at the front of the church and shoved a packet of papers into each hand. It turns out that last year's church-sponsored MLK essay contest only got 5 entries, so this year she was obliged to trick and shame them into entering. The essay question: "Has the civil rights struggle and heroes of yesterday influenced your life as a teen today? If so, how?" I was struck by several things at once:

1) What have we come to when the substance of a month of reverence and remembrance is reduced to this? African-Americans have always had a rich culture of oral histories and collective consciousness. We've honored our ancestors through libations and dances, stories and traditions. Now our children, indeed our young adults, can hardly be bothered to remember any but the most "commercial" black figures. You know what I mean: Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, and of course, Martin Luther King. What about the less popular heroes? What about the still living local heroes, scattered in communities across the nation? I have often found it sad that we have not mined and preserved the still living civil rights story being carried in the hearts, minds, and memories of our elderly. Even baby boomers were a part! The crux of the Civil Rights Movement was barely 50 years ago!

2) Why are we still asking the uninspired question, "how has this affected us"? An essay question that boring is asking for nothing beyond a recitation of black history facts and firsts and a few platitudes of gratitude. It is a moot point to ponder, how history has affected us. Why aren't we leading kids to analyze, to think critically? The struggle isn't over. Every day another news blurb proves that the frontier of the struggle is barely explored. What about the inextricably linked aspect of class? What about the rights of other minority ethnic groups in America?

As I watched the church debacle from the fourth row, I felt conflicted. I was happy there was a contest at all, and also happy that someone was passionate enough about it to put in the effort, but I also felt a burning desire to stand up and say something. I wanted to write an essay of my own, give a speech, do something to steer everyone from the rutted, oft-traveled road they were mired in. But I was silent instead. I realized that there was nothing to be done at that point, and I held it all in. I may not be able to affect ironclad Baptist tradition at a church I don't belong to, but I can make a difference in my day to day life, and I can certainly teach all the people I get my hands on differently. And so that is what I am doing.

This Black History month, think differently. Know that Black history is American history. Learn a cool new fact about Black people every day. Watch an edifying "black" movie. Think about the issues in our current cultural paradigm that comprise the current racist or classist problems in America. Set out to pay more attention. You'll begin to notice them everywhere. Lastly, stand up where ever and whenever you can against them. If we all strive to cherish each other, then change gon come sooner rather than later.

Post Theme: Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) by James Brown

It's Official! Yes We Can

Why does it seem like my life, as insignificant as it may be on a global scale, is so reflective of our current times? It seems like at this juncture, I am continually skating a cliff side road bordered on crisis. Is the same not true, with our nation, our world? During these times, I know that God is sovereign, but it doesn't stop the maelstrom of thoughts in my head. I am reminded that the Chinese character for crisis is also the one for opportunity. (I'm not even sure that's really true, as I don't read Chinese, but there's something so poignant and wise about it that it doesn't even matter.) And I am comforted by the quiet still voice in my own spirit that rarely speaks, but was heard to say a few weeks earlier: "THIS IS YOUR YEAR." (How does it seem to scream yet be so quiet? That's the nature of God. Simple, yet divinely complex in His simplicity.)

And so, to the American nation, I say: I can't help believe with rising certainty, that this is our year.



I read a great article that started all this called Why Obama Matters. It was a link from a friend's status message on Gmail. A friend that I will always be grateful to. I, like so many in the nation, feel really disenfranchised. It could be a youthful, generation Y thing, but I don't think so. I think that the current government that we live under is non-reflective of the real country in which we live. I believe that it's current voice is not my voice, not our voice, and that we are under-represented. After all, what's the alternative? To believe the opposite? That's enough to send me emigrating to Canada for certain, no joke. If I imagined myself for one minute, even in Mississippi, which I believe to be the very bowels of America, to be surrounded by the kind of smug, supercilious ignorance, and fundamental disregard of human dignity that I see (and hear) every time I watch our leaders on television, I would WALK until I got away from it. No matter how long it took. I would take a Rabbit Proof Fence walk, people. I might end up in Asia. I say all this to say that I was not paying attention to the upcoming presidential election, certain of a few things:
1) that the current dissatisfaction that people are expressing would lead to the certainty of Democrat in office.

2) that I would be picking the Democratic ticket.

3) that therefore my candidate would win.

4) that Hillary Clinton is an equal choice to Obama.

5) that having either a "first woman president" or a "first black president" is enough to prove our desire to progress and our willingness to do so.

All of these are wrong assumptions, and dumb too. Read them carefully and you'll see the problem. These assumptions are ignorant and born of apathy and laziness! (Yeah, I can be really tough on myself can't I?) I was thinking these things because it was the easiest thing for me to do: wait on the world to change while doing nothing to change it, certain that it won't really change and ready to be "surprised" and disappointed. I'm glad that I got shocked out of this, and that I am now rallying. If you change nothing, then nothing changes! (That sounds really good, so I know I couldn't have just made that up...anybody know where that's from originally?)

Recently, there have been some changes in my mindset. I have been convinced over the past few weeks that we need Obama and the grassroots, radical can-do ideas he represents. I am convinced he is the best presidential candidate, bar none. I am convinced that we need out of the baby boomer cultural identity confusion that has been driving our political dialogue and disagreements. I am convinced that the next president needs to be "free" in a way that no one else is. We need no pre-established political machinery, no network of secret contacts, lobbies, and scorecards of favors owed and favors due. I am convinced we need to do immediate and effective diplomatic damage control in our relationships with other nations. We also need a shocking, undeniable statement of our LACK of racist, religious, and/or sectarian agenda (even if that's not exactly true... yet). What better way than a black man with a Muslim name? Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to reduce Obama to only that, although God knows he must be used to it and get it a lot as do I as a black woman in America. I just mean that he is refreshing: the face, the name, the family, the religious outlook, the policies, the lack of scandal, the prospective plans. THE POTENTIAL. THE HOPE.

As I walk towards a time of triumph and radical change in my personal life, I pray that my country would too. I know that I am on my way out of a valley, and We, the People, can and should do the same. Get out and vote, and make it happen. Barack the Vote, 2008!

Back to Blog

I have decided that this is going to be a general blog from now on to record, for posterity, what will the GREATEST YEAR EVER (or at least the best one in a long time).

Here I am, writing from the proverbial pit:

1) Unemployed since September (read: no paychecks, spent savings, etc)
2) Living with parents in coastal MS
3) Victim of Identity Theft
4) Overweight
5) Pathologically single, apallingly chaste, chillingly inexperienced

But I know all of that is going to change. In fact, it already has changed where it counts: on the inside. There's a person inside this body just BURSTING to be let free. This person is an achiever, a conqueror, a warrior. This person gets exactly what she wants. And she is familiar and has been missed. I am happy to reconnect with her, and will welcome her with open arms when she does break free. Woman, thou are loosed!